the difference of the resulting turbulence from the wave bounced back from the bottom surface at 2m here and from the more traditional 3m is a big deal. The water is pushed by the swimmer's hands with the speed of something on the scale of 2 meters per second, so, as the swimmer moves forward, that turbulent movement of the water reflected by the pool bottom may as well come behind the legs in the 3m depth case while in the 2m depth case it would catch the legs decreasing the efficiency of their movement.
The Titmus vs Sanders vs Ledecky 400m could have been a world record race in another pool, but there's a pretty good chance we'll never see the three of them race each other again.
In Ledecky's case the clock is the only competition, and she's just so much better than anyone else it's currently impossible for someone to race her.
In Athletics at non-Championship meets they have pacemakers who provide a pace for the eventual winners to chase when they are going for fast times.
It'd be interesting to see what Ledecky could do if she swam (for example) with male pacemakers as competition.
Or maybe Summer Sanders will move up to the 1500m and we'll see a real race before Ledecky retires.
The Olympics used to be held at Olympia. It's not difficult to make the conditions the same every four years.
That way, there's no circus that goes around at great expense each time, and the Olympic city becomes a centre for sports science during the interim.
Perhaps have separate summer and winter cities.
Only drawback is the ioc doesn't get to choose a city every four years.
That’s a massive drawback which is probably insurmountable.
They to love kickback.
If there is no big event happening somewhere, the Olympic have no point. There are already permanent venues and international competitions happening for each of the sports of the Olympic.